


the devil and the deep blue sea

by song_of_staying



Series: Jackie/Tom futurefic [1]
Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Cults, Curse Breaking, Demon Deals, Demonic Sacrifice, F/M, First Meetings, Future Fic, Pre-Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-18 03:07:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13672974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/song_of_staying/pseuds/song_of_staying
Summary: Tom knew that his situation was fucked up. But he never thought his cultists would endanger anyone else.





	the devil and the deep blue sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naiade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naiade/gifts).



> Dear Naiade, I think we have talked about this ship anonymously in the past and I absolutely love the concept of these two getting together. I hope you will enjoy my two fills! They're set around five years apart.

Tom’s cultists had the worst timing. He was in an actual, politically significant meeting, and his mom wasn’t there to smooth over his fuckups. He flinched when the invisible shackles on his wrists started warming up. He had around ten minutes before they started leaving visible burns. That was totally enough time to wrap the meeting up gracefully.

He showed up on the cult’s island seventeen minutes later. It was fine. He was totally resistant to heat-related pain, mostly. Did they want money? Did they want him to find another free web designer for their website? He'd had to do it himself last time.

When he landed in his pentagram, there was somebody else there.

Tom stumbled, still more Eldritch than not. Then he drew back to the edge of the pentagram. It was a girl, and they had tied her to the ornate column that Tom had built for them. For a terrifying moment, he thought the girl was dead. Then she looked at him with wide green eyes, and Tom exhaled, slow and careful.

What the _hell_ had they done?

Keeping both palms raised, he stepped closer. She was in the center of his room-sized pentagram. She looked all right? He didn’t know. He had no idea what to do except keep his rage down until he got her free.

“This was a mistake,” he heard himself say. “I’m not a tribute-taker. These guys, they made a mistake. Are you hurt?”

She kept her lips pressed together but shook her head.

“They’re uh. They’re crazy, to be honest,” he said. “Can I?” The cultists used handcuffs to tie her arms back. He melted the metal away, as careful as possible. He used to practice that kind of thing.

His own hands were shaking just a little, but the girl’s hands weren’t.

“They’re crazy,” she said, steady. “But you’re their demon, right?”

“I’m not theirs!” Fuck, Tom couldn’t afford to scare her by snapping. He tried to unwind, to smile. Then he remembered his stupid fang and covered his mouth. Instead, he offered a thumbs-up. “They made a mistake about that too.”

“Right. But they called and you came.” The girl shrugged. She was around twenty, he thought. His own age, or a little older. “I don’t know much about magic stuff but that seems kind of significant to me.”

“I sort of have… a working relationship with them,” he said.

“Oh yeah? Is it mutually beneficial?” She stepped just a little back from him. “They said you gave them this island and I’m the thank-you note.”

“It’s not like that.” Tom sat down. He had it on good authority that he looked less threatening that way. Or more ‘losertastic’, okay, whatever. “Look, I… when I said there was a mistake, I meant I fucked up.”

She crouched next to him. There was a scrape on her knee. “What did you do?” she asked.

“I fell for a Get Good Quick scam,” he blurted, then bit his lip. If being a loser was reassuring, he was being an amazing diplomat right now, bringing solace to the masses.

“Uh?” She poked him in the arm. “Gonna need some context here, dude.”

“Yeah. So if you’ve seen something like a black jar of tar around here? That’s my soul. Which I handed over to these guys because I wanted to demoncize - I mean, to sort of like, put certain parts of my personality into storage. I’m a fucking idiot. They didn’t help with my problem but they can force me to do whatever they want now.” He exhaled, hard. “I don’t even know why they thought I needed a tribute on top of everything. To sweeten the deal, I guess? They have some really old-fashioned ideas, and if I find where they got their spells, I’m going to - ”

“Wait,” she said. He waited. He hadn’t actually talked about this with anyone. It was so mortifying.

“So,” she said, calm. “You sold your soul. To humans. That’s a thing that demons can do.”

“I know! It’s like, the most amateur way to fuck yourself over. My mom would kill me if she knew.” He fiddled with a burned hole in his jeans. “Well, no, I mean, she’d kill all of these guys. That’s why I never told her. I figured it’d be fine if I made them an island? Lock them away from civilization, you know. Play along with their stupid chants. But if they’re kidnapping people now, I guess it’s time to tell her.”

“Wait,” she said. “Kill them for real?”

“Yeah.”

She pressed her lips together and Tom backtracked. “She doesn’t do that a lot. But, uh, you know. They sort of enslaved her only child? So she’s got to do something about it, even if her only child’s a fucking idiot. Legally speaking, it makes them dangerous.”

It occurred to Tom that the girl didn’t know he was a _royal_ demon. Would that help his case or not? 'Trust me, I’m royalty' didn’t actually work all that well outside the palace.

“Legally speaking, huh?”

“My mom’s kind of important? She can’t let these things happen without consequences. Consequences are a big deal in my culture.”

“I get that,” Jackie said. “My mom’s a kindergarten teacher, she’s big on consequences too. But look, there’s gotta be something we can do. I mean, can you get me home?”

“Uh. I can take you to the underworld,” he said. “Probably? I mean, it’s a real place, I don’t mean like death.”

“But can you take me to a boat?”

“No.” He rubbed his wrists. “Sorry. I can’t leave the pentagram.”

She nodded and then shrugged. She toed the edge of the red painted pentagram and stepped over it. There was a hiss of static, and he wondered whether she felt it on her skin. But it didn’t harm her. She was totally and fully human.

“They’re basically like, controlling you with your soul,” she said, standing outside of his pentagram. “So you need it back, right?”

“I need it set free, yeah,” he said, watching her very closely. “But look, these guys are kind of unstable. You don’t want -”

“Sure I do,” she said, and slipped out of the ceremonial room.

Tom stayed on the floor, curling up. The cultists had ceremonial knives, and he always thought they were stupid. Just a stupid mortal stab at matching Underworld decor. Now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Fuck, he hadn’t even asked the girl’s name.

He scrambled to his feet when soul came rushing back to him. It slammed against the invisible barrier of the pentagram and spread out into tendrils. Tom scraped at the invisible wall, but his soul was just a hair’s breadth out of reach.

The girl ran back into the ceremonial chamber. She slammed the door shut and bolted it.

She was missing a tennis shoe and grinning in triumph.

“What did you do?” he asked, after he tried to punch through the invisible wall. “Are you okay?”

“I just used my natural talent for breaking stuff,” she said, standing near him. “What’s going on, bro?”

“I can’t get through the pentagram. Both halves of me are stuck.” His soul curled in inky displeasure. God, he was going to feel so enraged as soon as he got a moment to think.

“The cultists aren’t _that_ dumb,” she said, with a hint of urgency. “They’re gonna notice their fancy jar is broken and they’ll get in here.”

“I know,” he said. He needed a moment to think. He needed - “Hey,” he said. “I need some help, again.”

“Sure thing, dude,” she said. “What do you need?”

“Can you please grab my hand and then pull it out of the pentagram? And keep it there. I’ll, uh, help.”

“Sure?” She looked wary. “Which one do you want?”

He offered her his left, and bit down on the inside of his cheeks. She had warm, strong hands.

The pain of his hand and wrist crossing the pentagram was searing, and Tom doubled over with the force of it. It felt wrong, suffocating, like his hand had sunk through a solid object that was crushing it from every direction. It was a heavy, inexorable pain.

The girl’s grip on his hand was like a vice.

His soul returned slowly to him, drop by drop. He could feel it spreading out, offering a small respite from the pain. He didn’t tell her to let go until he got all if it back. Then the girl released him, and he sank down to the floor.

Tom’s hand was blackened but he felt okay. He felt better than he had in months, and he suddenly couldn’t believe how tired he had been. For months. The cultists had left him his rage, but they took this away - this feeling like he could burn the world down if it suited him.

He rose up, a little, just because he could, and let himself speak some ancient words of healing. It sort of helped? Maybe it didn’t, maybe his scarred hand just didn’t matter.

“So are you doing something constructive right now?”

The girl! Tom needed to stop being scary, not that she looked scared. He needed to get her out of here.

He floated over the stupid painted lines on the floor. What a stupid thing to get stopped by. He had promised her a boat, sort of, but really, he could take her anywhere.

Tom heard a heavy slam hit the chamber door. Even the cultists’ timing seemed better now that he was free of them.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m getting you back to dry land, okay? Or Paris, if you want?” He kind of felt like Paris.

“Just get me off the island,” she said, with increased urgency.

He nodded quickly, held out his uninjured hand. It was tricky, teleporting with a passenger, but there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do right now.

He landed in a park in Marco’s part of town, it was the closest place he could think of.

“Sweet,” said the girl. She left her tennis shoe in the ceremonial chamber, shit! Tom could go back for it. Maybe he should offer to buy her new shoes? Would that be rude? It was getting hard to think and his rage was catching up with him at last.

“Dude,” she said. “Dude.” She snapped her fingers, and Tom stopped levitating.

“Sorry,” he said, and he should have said that so many times tonight. “I’m so sorry you got involved in that, those assholes are my responsibility and -”

“Yeah,” she said. “So what are you going to do about them?”

It was like swallowing a rock. But at least the rage cooled down into a useful thing. Fucking consequences.

"I think," he said slowly, "I think my mom needs to know. I'll ask my dad to help keep her from killing them - she doesn't  _have_ to, now that I'm free."

"You're sure?" Did she want revenge, he wondered. Not the murder kind, but something smaller.

"I'm sure. I don't want that on my conscience, or on yours." Mom's conscience was a different matter, and Tom was cool with that on most days. "I'm sinking that fucking island first."

"Are you kidding?" She shook her hair back. It kind of matched the moonlight. "Take away their boats, bro. And the internet."

It was perfect. Tom smiled at her, and forgot to cover his mouth. The girl smiled back. He held out his undamaged hand, ready to introduce himself.

"You're Tom, right?" she asked. "I've seen you on Instagram."

Tom blinked.

"I've got to say, dude, this thing you're wearing right now? It's not even among your top ten looks."

"I got summoned from a meeting, so - how come I've never seen you?"

"I don't know! Do you look at your friends' photos if you're not in them?"

Well, not  _lately_. Tom drew his hand back, hesitant, but she grabbed it with both of her own.

"It's Jackie," she said. "And you should totally message me about this, because I've got questions. But I've gotta call my moms right now and tell them I love them."

"Good idea," he said, stupid. He sort of shook himself and teleported away home before he could embarrass himself.

He had to call his own mom. But first, he was going to sink some boats. Maybe he could upload pics of it too. There was nothing wrong with taking a nice artistic selfie in the middle of righteous retribution.


End file.
